Disadvantages of having health insurance It can be expensive. Not all insurance companies may accept it, it may be more expensive if you have pre-existing conditions, access to adequate health insurance may be limited, some insurance companies exclude important medical treatments, and premiums may increase as you age. To look at both sides of the ongoing debate, here are some of the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, which are often debated:. The cost hasn't come down for everyone.
Those who don't qualify for subsidies may find that the health insurance plans on the market are unaffordable. Clients may end up paying more for a plan that includes benefits, such as maternity care, that they may not need. Breen and colleagues (200) modeled the expected increase in screening rates for different ethnic groups if they could obtain health insurance coverage and a source of regular care. This chapter presents the Committee's review of studies that address the impact of health insurance on various health-related outcomes.
There is a consistent and positive relationship between health insurance coverage and health-related outcomes in a set of studies that use a variety of data sources and different analytical approaches. The effective treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, HIV and depression (Box 3) includes not only regular services and care by health professionals, but also the active participation of patients in modifying their behavior, monitoring their condition, and participating in treatment regimens (Wagner et al. There are public health insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, for which some may qualify based on age, income, and family size. The main disadvantage of taking out health insurance is the cost, since different health insurance plans can guarantee higher premiums in relation to many factors, such as the state of your health, your age, your lifestyle, etc.
In addition, Medicare beneficiaries with supplementary health insurance were classified as private insured; therefore, those counted as public insured included only Medicare beneficiaries without supplemental policies (a lower-income subgroup of all Medicare beneficiaries) and Medicaid beneficiaries. These are usually chronic conditions, but they can also occur as one-time or infrequent episodes throughout life. According to two studies, one prospective and experimental and the other a longitudinal analysis of a cohort of patients who lost or maintained Medicaid coverage, health insurance coverage is associated with better blood pressure control in low-income people with hypertension. This experiment demonstrates both the sensitivity of the use of health care in the general population to cost-sharing and the relative insensitivity of the short-term (three to five years) health outcomes of the general population to cost-sharing.
This impact of health insurance on the mortality of adults infected with HIV in a short follow-up period of six months shows how sensitive health outcomes can be for coverage when it makes it easier to receive effective treatment. After controlling for the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis and other factors, uninsured women had an adjusted risk of death 49 percent higher than that of women with private insurance, and women with Medicaid had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private insurance. The authors compared participants who had private health insurance for an entire year with those who had been without health insurance all year. One of the biggest disadvantages of having health insurance is the cost of premiums, deductibles, co-pays, services, tests, medications, and other items that aren't covered in the premium.
Longitudinal studies that follow a cohort of people over time can provide a “before and after” picture of health status, by comparing a group that maintained coverage with one that lost it. .
